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How to Build a Capsule Wardrobe from Scratch Step 16: Evaluating and Balancing our Neutrals

BIG BIG BIG EDIT: THIS IS ONLY STEP SIXTEEN…

If you are going to make a typo, make a really big one!

I had medical tests this a.m., and have been asleep all afternoon; I am so sorry for the delay in fixing this inexcusable error!

We’re very close to wrapping up our capsule wardrobes, but there are a couple more things we need to do to make sure that our choices will work as well for us as possible. So far, we’ve added pieces within our color scheme, but we’ve not been particularly rigorous in making sure that we have a balance between our neutrals.

To address this, I’ve looked at each wardrobe and tried to find the “Core of Four” (two tops and two bottoms, that will make 4 outfits) in each neutral. For example, here in the brown and camel/beige wardrobe, we’re well established with brown garments, but we haven’t yet filled in a major gap of beige “tops”.

This is a pretty common oversight; sometimes we don’t feel comfortable wearing one of our neutrals near our face. If you’re feeling this way, consider purchasing one top instead of two; don’t skimp, but don’t invest a mortgage payment in something that you’re testing. If you find that you just can’t wear the neutral near your face, you can re-adjust your choices to have more accent colors near your face. There’s no hard and fast rule here, except that you should be happy with your wardrobe!

After adding these tops, and sorting our wardrobe by color, you can see that we have a lovely assortment of brown garments, a respectable and useful range of beige, some good “bridge” garments, and plenty of accents!

They grey and black wardrobe is suffering from a shortage of greys! It’s easy to go overboard with one neutral at the expense of the other – just make sure to keep them balanced if you don’t want to have items stranded in your wardrobe because they don’t have enough “family members” for full utility.

This wardrobe now still shows a strong bias toward black, but the grey garments offer a lot more versatility. The bridge garments are strongly represented; but we could add to the light neutral, and the bright blue…

The neutrals here are well balanced – there are clear “Core of Fours” in both neutrals, but there’s a noticeable absence of light neutrals blouses or sweaters. Unless you’re completely opposed to wearing white, off-white or cream near your face, these are garments that are always useful to have on hand.

Almost perfectly balanced neutrals (please note that you’re almost NEVER going to have exactly the same number of pieces in each of your neutrals – that’s really not an objective!), but a definitely lack of “bridge” garments…

Here again we find an absence of beige blouses, sweaters or tee shirts. While that might be a conscious choice because of a color aversion, it’s worth trying these colors out – maybe with scarves or jewelry. If you are firm in your color preferences, then stock up on accent colors or “bridge” garments that are easier to wear.

Comments

You have put so much work into thesee! There is so much to study. Beautiful. One collection I love is the beige snd olive. I think I would use the burgandy as my core neutral and get rid of the olive. Do you have a suggestion for another accent color that would work with these changes?

Burgundy is a big color in my wardrobe, probably more of a neutral than an accent. In addition to brown and olive (theoretically my neutrals but in quantity more like my accents), I also have a lot of eggplant purple, and burnt orange has gone from being a slightly scary "maybe I'll try this" to one of my new favorites.

Brilliant! I thought the wardrobes were great before, but today's gives that information I needed to look at my own perfectly fine wardrobe to show me what I might be missing. I'm going to go in and group my clothes by color instead of item right now and see how things stand. I suspect it is bridge items I am missing. Thank you!

This post is absolutely great! I love the cohesive ensembles you are offering. I had not thought about the concept of "bridge garments" at all, but I know see that they are indispensable (and my wardrobe utterly lacks them). Could you please elaborate that idea in further posts? Thanks!

Lo, and behold, when I took everything out of my closet and put it together by color, I discovered the only real problem I had was needing to remove those items from my closet that don't fit the scheme. You just saved me some real money – I do not need to buy anything else and already have a fabulous versatile wardrobe, thanks to you!

This is a most helpful series. I have a mostly worn out wardrobe, small budget, and several significant lifestyle changes in the last year. Currently, an unusually long stretch of warm weather is forcing additions to my summer wardrobe. I especially love your showing several palettes with neutrals and accents concurrently. This is very helpful. Thank you so much.

Janice, I have learned so much from this incredibly helpful series. It has moved me from understanding the concepts to making the clothing in my closet "click"! The editor in me, however, can't help but wonder where #16 is. I don't want to miss a bit! Thanks for all you do.

This is so interesting to me; almost like a new mystery series unfolding. I'm seeing why my wardrobe doesn't quite work. I've got the one neutral thing down in spades. The problem is, that is all I have, so I just keep buying black, black, black everything. I need to work in the second neutral and the accent colors now. The problem is, after seeing all the lovely combinations here, I don't know what to select! I love the light blue you have, but the browns and blues together are also wonderful. Could you publish this in an e-book or something? I need to keep it handy so I can keep digging it out and trying to figure out the pieces. You are my heroine, truly.

I have been reading your blog daily and this series is the first one that convinced me that I really could do this. I just now got my color pie chart done and am working on the next stage in the series. I'd love to know how other people are progressing or even stumbling on following the series. What do you think of a reader sharing day?

It's a pie chart, that you can make in Excel or PowerPoint. My days working in advertising come in handy now and then when I blog! I have never found another site on which you can make these graphs – if anybody knows of one, please let us know!

I have been rather naughty in not commenting along this wonderful journey, but just love how you have grouped this last lot, it makes so much sense (it all did from the start) but seeing it set out like this is inspiring. PS did you get my email about the travel kit?

I do love your blog and this week I realized why it's so resonant. I'm 60 so when I was growing up I played Ppaerdools all the time. cutting out or making flat paper outfits..and here on your blog is that same delight and fun and imagination. Thank you!

Hi Janice! Thanks for the wardrobe ideas… They're great! I was wondering where you got all your wonderful clothing pictures from? Also, wondering what software you used to bring your clothing peices together for complete outfits or complete wardrobes found on one page??? I would like to create pages for myself with all my own clothing on one page or different outfits I can put together with my own clothes. Then, I would also like to make a dream wardrobe page with clothing I will later purchase so I would like to know where I could get clothing pictures for inspiration for this dream wardrobe… Thanks for your answers, Julie 🙂

This is the point my wardrobe creations tend to fail, not evaluating and balancing the neutrals. I end up with lots of color odds and end and not a lot to wear with them, leaving me to the same suit over and over. Or hating it and buying something else to compensate that isn't what I need.

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The Vivienne Files is a unique personal style blog with carefully-selected capsule wardrobes based on color palettes drawn from works of art, nature, and more. It helps women buy less clothing, and to love what they buy. Read more...

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